Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Monday July 21, 2008 @02:53PM
from the stuff-to-see dept.

I forgot to mention the other bit of exciting comic book movie news this week: DaSpudMan noted that the Watchmen trailer is out — from the Director of 300, which spawns mixed feelings at our office. But it looks pretty good.

Nite Owl looks too much like Batman. (Sure they are similar characters, but very different also. I feel Nite Owl is not a very "dark" character, and making him into a 2nd rate Batman would not be doing his character justice.)

Also I thought Rorshach's voice was a more distinctive monotone. He sounds just like any random guy whispering in this.

And they didn't show any footage of the "vintage" comic book characters (i.e. the first generation Watchmen) so bummer on that.

But based on the production clips it seems like the director is really trying to be true to the story and look of the comic, so as long as they don't change the ending I don't see that it could be THAT horrible, no matter if Alan Moore has already disowned it (he disowns like ALL his movie adaptations, doesn't he?)

That said, I still wish Darren Aronofsky had taken over the directorial reigns.

Btw, is Smashing Pumpkins doing the soundtrack or is that just for the trailer?

But based on the production clips it seems like the director is really trying to be true to the story and look of the comic, so as long as they don't change the ending I don't see that it could be THAT horrible,

Considering that my major complaint of Watchmen is the ending, I think changing it could only help. See my review at the Amazon listing for Watchmen [amazon.com] , but basically I felt Moore could have created a much more refreshing plot than having the supervillian ultimately explain his whole scheme in dialog

I love that ending exactly because the heroes think that he is just monologuing, when that is not exactly what happens. I was pretty much vague to avoid spoilers. Watchmen is definitely one of the best comics there is, so it is a big challenge to bring it to the screen. Even more if you consider the parallel stories and subplots.

While it made no pretense of subtlety, the way in which the supervillain ultimately explains his scheme was markedly different from the norm, and he explicitly points out why. It was a creative twist on an old standby which was still pretty effective in keeping me engaged.

Ozy isn't uttering forth a monologue; he's distracting everybody. He's already won. Further, he's not trying to show them how smart he is, daring them to outthink him, Riddler-style; he's giving himself up for judgement. He wouldn't have stopped any of the heroes had they decided to go reveal the plan; you'll note that he lets Rorshach go. Further, he seeks absolution from Dr. Manhattan.

In other words, the entire point of that scene is to send up the comic book trope.

When Ozymandis and Dr. Manhattan are talking at the end, Dr. Mahnattans says, "It is highly unlikily Rorshach will reach the mainland". Moments before, he obliterated him. In other words, he seemingly lied to Ozymandis. There is so much other stuff buried in that novel that I've wondered if that was another one I just haven't figured out yet.

... the entire point of that scene is to send up the comic book trope.

In particular: A major issue with comic heroes is the ends/means issue. Comic "heroes" regularly "fight crime" using methods that are forbidden for that purpose. Warrantless surveillance (such as Superman's hearing and vision), terroristic threats (such as Batman's whole schtick), etc.

Ozy's plan just scales up the moral quandary to a global, survival of humanity, scale, and rubs the heroes' noses in it.

Ozzy made his choice. But he isn't sure he made the right one. So he wants a sanity check from his peer group - and suitable punishment if they decide he did wrong: "... on the mercy of the court.". To keep them honest he puts them in the same position he was in. If they decide the other way they can punish him - and in the process undo what he did. If they decide the same way they're accessories after the fact. And if some decide each way the ones that side with him are left with murder of the others as the only way to maintain the achievement of the "good end".

Not just that. They can either undo what he did, or keep quiet and effectively be accomplices. They all are now in the same boat.

Understandably, Rorschach realizes this and refuses to be complicit in Ozy's crime. He's a zero-tolerance type. Burn the world down if you must, but crime must be punished. That is why he refuses.

It's also probably why he dares Dr. Manhattan to destroy him. He knows he has to go public and that will most likely be the end of the world. Better he should d

Understandably, Rorschach realizes this and refuses to be complicit in Ozy's crime. He's a zero-tolerance type. Burn the world down if you must, but crime must be punished. That is why he refuses.

You know, it suddenly occurs to me that Rorschach is the closest thing in Watchmen to a classic comic-book character; four colour morality, only kind of in the opposite direction. Where Superman is always good and right, Rorschach is the mirror image of that; black and white, the negative side of utter uncompromise.

And he dies for it. It's all a metaphor for the old style of comics being killed off for being utterly unable to adapt.

You know, it suddenly occurs to me that Rorschach is the closest thing in Watchmen to a classic comic-book character; four colour morality, only kind of in the opposite direction.

Rorschach is a Psychopath, attempting to compensate by becoming rule-bound (and doing it poorly). Moore has the personality dead-on.

(It's interesting that the inspirations for Rorschach were apparently Steve Ditko's "Mr. A" and "The Question" - attempts at Objectivist superheros. Objectivism is a philosophy that starts from pure selfishness and derives the nonaggression principle and motivation for other behavior traits that keep its adherents within the law and make them people who, while often not likable, can be gotten along with. As such it's accessible to psychopaths. Teaching Objectivism to career criminals, motivating them to adopt its behavioral ruleset as a compensation, may be the only consistently successful rehabilitation program that has ever been studied.)

It's more than that. Rorschach wandered outside in Antarctica and didn't come back. Dan knows he didn't take the owlship. One way or another, they're all complicit in Rorschach's death -- they didn't ask questions when he disappeared, and there's no sign that they even looked for him.

They gave up being heroes, gave up any pretense of changing the world for the better, because they were overwhelmed and outclassed. Probably for the best, in their situation....but me, I would have been Rorschach.

Although I certainly didn't put 2 & 2 together enough to realize this when reading, Ozymandias gives a hint of his attitude when he repeatedly compares himself to Alexander the Great.

Alexander the Great wasn't called that because he was a great guy. He was called that because he ruled a vast piece of territory and brought prosperity to those he ruled. He achieved that rule by killing lots of people who hadn't done anything wrong other than oppose being ruled by him.

I think there's an even more poignant symbolism about Ozymandias which even he seems to have missed, which is his name itself. Whilst he may have chosen it to compare himself with the great "King of Kings" it is undercut tragically by the famous poem of the same name by Shelley:

And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sa

That song was already in the Batman and Robin soundtrack, and even had its own video. I don't think they'll retread it. Early teasers use placeholder music all the time. I can't count the number of times I've heard Mortal Kombat background music (it's mostly ethnic-sounding drums) or the music from The Fugitive (film version) in a trailer for a totally different movie.

Indeed. There's a niche market for creating music suitable for trailers/other place holders. Immediate Music springs to mind. There's also a significant amount of reuse. For example, I remember at least one trailer for the Core used music from The Rock.

And Hans Zimmer has been reusing his musical themes for quite some time now...it always cracks me up when I'm watching a movie and I'm like...hmmmm this sounds a lot like the rock! And then Hans ends up being the composer for the movie...

I think the less than inspiring costumes may be intentional, as if to suggest that the costumed heroes are operating at one level, while Dr. Manhattan is operating at another level entirely. Another plane of existence, in fact.

You see, the other costumed heroes were just that - some had improved capabilities (like Ozymandias), and some had neat devices (like Nite Owl), but in the end they were all people whose costume was primarily aimed at concealing their identities.

Dr. Manhattan was different... since he was no longer entirely human he was no longer affected by human norms and values (watch how his clothing becomes sketchier from his early days to the "present").

Moore was actually pretty complimentary of David Hayter's script (inasmuch as he said it was good as he could hope for), which they apparently haven't deviated too far from. He's still dismissive of the idea of a movie version in on principle, of course.

Personally, I thought Ozymandius's costume in the comic book was kind of silly, and was somewhat relieved when they changed it for the movie. I'd tend to agree on silk spectre, except those faux garters are a little edgy.

> Nite Owl looks too much like Batman. (Sure they are similar characters, but very different also. I feel Nite Owl is not a very "dark" character, and making him into a 2nd rate Batman would not be doing his character justice.)

This is from memory way back in the eighties, but I seem to remember that Moore originally wanted to do this as a "parallel world" using the DC characters, but the company said no. I could be misremembering. But Night Owl was supposed to be this world's batman, and Dan Dreiberg struck me as the only really decent character of the whole bunch. As such, I'd expect him to be less "dark" than the other characters.

> Also I thought Rorshach's voice was a more distinctive monotone. He sounds just like any random guy whispering in this.

Did anyone else have trouble listening to Rorshach in the trailer? I could hear him fine in the "standard resolution" trailer, but his voice is drowned out by the music in the HD version. I wasn't expecting anything particularly different there -- Rorshach is a normal human, after all.

> But based on the production clips it seems like the director is really trying to be true to the story and look of the comic, so as long as they don't change the ending I don't see that it could be THAT horrible, no matter if Alan Moore has already disowned it (he disowns like ALL his movie adaptations, doesn't he?)

Agreed. The look is amazingly like the comic. And I applaud them for keeping it in 1985 instead of trying to twist the plot so it would fit in current times.

I believe the song was either "The end is the beginning is the end" or "The beginning is the end is the beginning" off of the Batman Forever soundtrack. Horrible, Horrible movie, but a pretty good soundtrack!

> I believe the song was either "The end is the beginning is the end" or "The beginning is the end is the beginning" off of the Batman Forever soundtrack. Horrible, Horrible movie, but a pretty good soundtrack!

That explains it. I made a huge effort to forget everything to do with that film. Just bought the song off itunes, though.

This is from memory way back in the eighties, but I seem to remember that Moore originally wanted to do this as a "parallel world" using the DC characters, but the company said no. I could be misremembering. But Night Owl was supposed to be this world's batman, and Dan Dreiberg struck me as the only really decent character of the whole bunch. As such, I'd expect him to be less "dark" than the other characters.

The Watchmen characters were originally supposed to be the characters DC purchased from Charlton Comics. When DC decided to use them in their universe instead, Alan Moore created new characters based on them. Nite Owl is his version of the Blue Beetle.

Did anyone else have trouble listening to Rorshach in the trailer? I could hear him fine in the "standard resolution" trailer, but his voice is drowned out by the music in the HD version. I wasn't expecting anything particularly different there -- Rorshach is a normal human, after all.

In terms of not having any superpowers, I guess he's normal in that respect. I would say that he's a very abnormal human though.

Night Owl was actually based on the Blue Beetle, having been denied the actual rights to the character by DC. Note the goggles in both character's costumes and the similarity to their vehicles. However I can certainly see why you'd mistake him for Batman, there are a lot of similarities.

All of the main Watchman characters are based on the characters that DC got from Charlton Comics (for example, Dr. Manhattan was based on Captain Atom, and Silk Spectre was based on Nightshade) Originally,

Ah, that's the one. Terminator Salivation, I keep miscalling it. About as bad as a friend who always read "destiny" as "density" so he'd keep saying "So when I was playing Spear of Desnity --fuck, destiny! So when I was playing SOD..." Heh. Fun to prank him on this. Hold our hands out dramatically to him say "Screw up everything you say, Luke, it is your density!"

Oh man, I've not waited so eagerly for a film since, ooh, Matrix Reloaded, or Phantom Menace... or possibly Scanner, Darkly.

This is not a good sign.

Why, oh why, are all the films of Alan Moore stories made to date been so lame? (Let's see, Constantine - total turkey; V for Vendetta - probably the least bad so far, scrupulously faithful to surface texture whilst completely missing the point; League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - almost as bad as Constantine;... From Hell - well I've not seen that, but as us cricket fans would say, it returned to the pavilion without troubling the scorer.

I know he's got his name pulled for reasons of principle, but really if it were purely down to "how good a film is it?" that would also be a good move.

If anyone out there's only seen the crappy films but not read the books, do yourself a favour and pick them up. Start with Watchmen. It's one of those works that seems to get more relevant every year.

Personally, I'm waiting for "D.R. And Quinch" or "Halo Jones" to be filmed =)

What was wrong with A Scanner Darkly? It was MUCH better than I expected. But then again my expectations of anything adapted from PKD is REALLY low, lower than my expectations of anything Lucas and Spielberg do. In the end though, it was a pretty good adaptation, and the animation didn't give me a migraine like Waking Life did. The casting was good too, since... The actors manage to have the same foibles as the characters they portray (except maybe Reaves, but you must take some bad with the good)

The sad fact is that authors rarely have any input in the film-ification of their work.

Indeed, Ms Le Guin has it spot-on. Having been involved with writing a few screenplays, I can tell everyone who's never been there, You Have No Idea. Seriously, on a project that makes it to the screen, there are a dozen or so self-important hacks between the writer and the final edit, all trying to "exercise their creativity" on the work. And the less clout you have as an established writer, the more talentless hacks will screw it up. It used to be that producers and other studio execs would take care of the business side and leave the filmmaking to the filmmakers. The modern studio system is rife with slick dolts who got into the business because their fathers, uncles, or other relatives "handed down" the job to them. These guys don't understand that it's not their job to "reimagine" your script. I've actually had these morons interrupt my pitch to to interject their "creative input". One instance: a story about a group of adventurers led by an old, but very wise and experienced man. One of the party is a young, good-looking, braggart prick. They're intentional polar opposites. The guy I was pitching to said "I think it'd be better if you got rid of the old guy and made the young guy the leader". His own assistant tried to explain why that'd be dumb, but the guy just kept basically saying "young heroes market better". What he was suggesting was the equivalent of getting rid of Picard and replacing him with Wesley or Barkley! In the end, he offered to buy the script outright--- which means he'd get some hack to rewrite the script with the young guy as the leader, and I'd see it on the USA Network at 3am and have to shoot myself over how bad it was. My co-writer and I insisted on full control, though, so (like all our projects) they option it for a nominal sum and it will never see the screen unless they get really desperate. S'ok. We get those option checks every year, and that's better than a single lump sum and an embarrassment on the screen. That was the last thing we pitched. We have better things to do with our time.

When I first heard they were making a Watchmen movie, I cringed. I remember what a sham League of Extraordinary Gentleman was, and I couldn't see Watchmen faring much better. Seeing the trailer, along with the recent track record of movies that finally do right by their comic book inspirations -- Iron Man, the rebooted Batman and Hulk -- I'm left with some hope that it might actually be pretty good after all.

naaaah - scratch that - 300 sucked giant gobs of poo. I was thinking of Wall-E. Wall-E was cute. I don't know how I got that confused. Prediction: Watchmen will rock the noobs and tards but disappoint the steadfast.

Bingo. Although the "03/06/09" thing is probably a nice coincidence, I think this is a combination of Snyder's previous success with "300" and with Hollywood seeing that a movie like this doesn't need to - or possibly want to open in the summertime to open big.

Because Memorial Day weekend is known as a time for Big Movie Releases, the schedule that weekend may be becoming too crowded, or the studios fear releasing that weekend raises expectations beyond what is reasonable.

Could anyone tell about Rorshach's mask? I always pictured it continually in (slow) motion, almost like a lava lamp... but it looks like the blots were unchanging. Maybe it just changes from scene to scene?

Thought the trailer looked quite good - although given how iconic the bloody smiley is, I was surprised I didn't see it there, unless I missed it.

Given the complexity and layers of the book, I don't expect it to be slavishly followed by the movie - in fact I hope it doesn't, and neither should any of the books fans as there's no way a movie could successfully manage that.

I want a good Watchmen movie, one that has the themes and idea of the book, one that always has something new to discover in it and one th

Most fans would rather have movies based on books and comics copied page for page to the screen than making it according to the spirit.Or whatever spirit means to the director, producers, studio execs, toy makers and actors.

Read the EW article [ew.com] - it should help you see how much of the book has been copied verbatim and how much of it was adapted while being "true to the spirit".

Oh... and the smiley is there. Comedian is wearing it in the Vietnam. Minus the bloodstain of course.And i

Not necessarily. If done right.I know that it CAN be done right - Moore may be good but he is no god.

Remember the first reactions to the news that the blond guy from that movie about gay cowboys and from that horrible movie about medieval knights from the 21st century - was going to play the Joker?After Nicholson's iconic performance?Come on! What the hell were they thinking?

It can be done in a good way. Couple of them probably.Also, a thousand wrong ones too.But lets be optimistic for a change.

Now the bizarre thing is that the panels and text balloons are EXACTLY like the graphic novel, with some "motion" applied. It's not animated, per se, but it isn't static either. This is good, very good.

The bizarre part is that the voices...ALL THE VOICES in Chapter 1, including females, are voiced by male "actors". And it's as bad as it sounds. In fact, the terrible voice acting almost ruins this.

There's a scene by scene comparison of the trailer and the relevant panels from the graphic novel here [ropeofsilicon.com]. It looks remarkably similar and I'm quite hopeful that this will be a credible conversion now.

They show Nite Owl doing a jump kick to some prisoners face. Nite Owl is supposed to be a pudgy, middle aged loser at this point in his life.

The action looks to be from the highly stylized school of superhero movie violence, which might look dated after seeing Dark Knight.

It looks like the coloring has been played with a lot, making it look more surreal. If anything, making it look like one of those 70s cop movies would fit the comic better.

This is not a "No" vote or anything. I'm going to reserve judgment on whether or not to see it after the story trailers come out. This was just some of the stuff that occurred to me while I was watching the trailer.

Of course, I could just be hyper-paranoid that they will make a crappy movie out of an outstanding comic book.

In its day, it may have been novel - though the groundbreakingness is overrated. But I think it's coasting on the teenage memories of a lot of people who haven't read it in 20 years.

The writing isn't that great. The stories aren't that good. The characters are not that interesting. Everything is overdone - in fact, to me it reads like high school prose. Not much subtlety to anything and quite a bit of boring violence. I have nothing against violence, but for example the rape scene is reminiscent of what a young teenage writer would think about if he was trying to write a rape scene. That is one example of many.

And God if there isn't a lot of really tedious exposition!

It's not tripe. It's just not nearly as impressive as everyone thinks.

Side note: I've noticed that the things people remember about the Watchmen are mostly the artwork - Rorschach, the Owl's craft, Doc Manhattan, etc. The art is much better than the writing...I will be nice and refrain from extending that analysis to the rest of Alan Moore's work;-)

Actually i thought the oppposite - i found the artwork (while still very good) rather bland when compared to the storyline, specially when contrasted with some modern comics (this one [hatrack.com] i read recently, in particular, has stunning artwork).

To each one its own, i guess. Watchmen broke with a lot of superhero comics conventions, presenting a rich storyline with (*gasp*) believable characters, and the long expositions added a lot to this. I admit that in some bits it got rather tedious; for example, i could've d

It is like nothing else out there and it's worth knowing the story before seeing the film. The comic's author is adamant that it's a different art-form and should be considered as a comic so it's worth seeing the comic first so that your first impression is of the story in its intended form. That said, I'm going to see the movie of course!

The comic's author is adamant that it's a different art-form and should be considered as a comic so it's worth seeing the comic first so that your first impression is of the story in its intended form.

Yeah, but Alan Moore is also adamant that a typo on the back cover of his complimentary copies of "V for Vendetta" was a good reason for throwing them all in the trash. He's honestly a bit of a putz about all sorts of things relating to his creative works.

This is an important aspect that I think is critical for successful adaptations. The writer/developer/director needs to understand and capitalize on the advantages of the medium, rather than simply regurgitate the material in the same form as it was received.

The Watchmen did some interesting things by supporting the main comic format with letters, articles, and prose in order to flesh out the background of the world. In a book, brevity can be sacrificed for extensive levels of detail. In a movie, you've got the full focus of the audience onto the screen in order to present the director's imagining of the story. This can enable an inspired accounting of the material, but is a double-edged sword since he must take the reins of imagination from the audience and guide it in the most entertaining fashion possible in a 1.5-2.5 hour timespan. He's armed with both visual and auditory effects to bring the story to life...as long as he has the budget.

There are particular advantages and disadvantages to each medium that really need to be taken into consideration to provide the most entertaining experience possible. The presenter must recognize what was used in the original medium and what must be done to successfully execute the material in the presenter's medium. If the best aspects of the comic fail to carry over to the movie he'd damn well better find another way to make it succeed or it's just a cheap knock-off that never needed to be made in the first place.

In this particular case, the Watchmen is some pretty heavy material in a dense comic-book form. He's already been supplied with the storyboards, but he'll need to nail the right look and sound, while preserving the key aspects of the storyline. The storyboard should carry over fairly easily, but he won't have the supporting stories and reading material, which he may need to replace by squeezing in brief and/or subtle moments of insight in the course of the movie.

I felt that this was a major flaw in Watchmen. Don't get me wrong, I'm grown up enough to read words without pictures, but the supporting stories were the least interesting part of the original graphic novel and really broke the flow of the main story. Losing these would give the movie adaptation something of a headstart.

>but the supporting stories were the least interesting part of the original graphic novel and really broke the flow of the main story

I think they were cleverly designed. For example, "Tales of the Black Freighter" was, in part, to give the person sitting in his living room reading a comic book a sense of what he would be sitting there reading if he lived in a world where superheroes were real.

I'm afraid that you're right about needing to squeeze. Capturing the fighting style of Rorshach versus the police is going to be very difficult, although I really enjoyed the contrast between 'heroes' and Rorschach in the comic book. And capturing the relationship between the Silk Spectre and the Comedian is begging for movie plot difficulty.

No doubt. That's one of the many mod options over at plastic.com that I wish were available here. (The others being: clever, succinct, scholarly, compelling, irrelevant, disingenuous, incoherent, and obnoxious.)

"Realistic" in the sense that it's closer to how the world would react to super heroes/villains and how those super heroes/villains would probably react to the real world. In the real world, we're not going to be ok with some masked vigilantes running around enforcing justice. And the world's problems aren't going to be solved by someone just because they can fly or are super strong.

But there is no massively oversimplifying Eastern philosophy in the guise of a kung-fu movie so it's not really that similar

Shame, shame, shame on all of you. It is well past time to put away childish things and grow up.

Graphic novels bear the same relation to novels as stage plays/movies/TV shows bear to live storytellers.

If one form is inherently "childish" than so is the other.

Time to grow up and "put away" plays, opera, and movie theaters. Throw out that TV and those DVDs. It's all kid stuff. You're an adult now - you should be getting your live entertainment solely sitting at a campfire with somebody who can spin a good